


Under the Stars

by Fire_Cat



Series: Lost and Found [7]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Aliens, Dialogue, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 13:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7759168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_Cat/pseuds/Fire_Cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're getting as bad as me." Xephos called as he walked up the last stretch of the hill, Strife, who was sat in the grass a little way ahead of him, turned to face his old friend as he heard his voice.</p><p>"It's a nice spot." Strife said simply. "The view's quite impressive." He added, looking up at the star filled sky.</p><p>"You're not wrong." Xephos smiled as he sat down beside Strife.</p><p>(In which Xephos and Strife reminisce and laugh at old memories whilst laying under the star-filled sky.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> See, I told you I'd write some fluff, and here it is, lovely fluff, :3 well, kinda.  
> Adding this to the end of Lost and Found since it's connected to that story. It takes place about a month after the end of Together?, or there abouts. It's a little longer than I anticipated but oh well, I'm fairly happy with it.  
> Enjoy :)

 

If there was one thing Strife couldn't deny, it was how beautiful the night sky looked from Minecraftia. On a clear night, away from any buildings, the sky was lit with millions of tiny lights and colours, stars and planets and faraway galaxies shimmering against the blackness despite how distant they were.

You'd never get a view like that from a Lumian city. It simply wasn't possible. But these spectacular sights were everywhere on Minecraftia, where big cities were few and far between and the world was plunged into near total darkness once the sun set. Often lit only by the moon and stars.

There was a hill near Xephos and Honeydew's house that looked out over the empty countryside. Nothing but grassland for miles. At night, it was pitch black and no doubt swarming with monsters, but the lack of light allowed the sky to be illuminated in beautiful interstellar patterns. Xephos had shown Strife this spot not long after he'd arrived, saying that he often came up here of an evening to relax, and to think. And Strife had subsequently found him up there quite a few times.

But it wasn't until about a month had passed since Strife's arrival, that this meeting happened the other way around.

"You're getting as bad as me." Xephos called as he walked up the last stretch of the hill, Strife, who was sat in the grass a little way ahead of him, turned to face his old friend as he heard his voice.

"It's a nice spot." Strife said simply. "The view's quite impressive." He added, looking up at the star filled sky.

"You're not wrong." Xephos smiled as he sat down beside Strife. The weather had been quite warm recently, and so Xephos wasn't wearing his red and gold jacket, just his striped shirt. Leaving his arms bare, and showing the bright blue bands around his wrists and forearms, and the swirls of luminous freckles that lit up his dark skin with a sapphire glow, though some were blotted out by the pale scars that streaked his arms. His eyes were shining just as brightly. The two gold rings around his tail also let off a dull glow in the darkness. "How you feeling?" He asked, voice soft as he looked at Strife.

"Tired." Strife smiled. "The days and nights are so much shorter here. I swear I'm still jet-lagged."

"Took me a little while to get used to it too. Still. Could be worse. At least it's just jet-lag. There's so many things that are considerably different here; the atmosphere, day-night cycles, the weather. Fuck. Even the gravity is different. And yet the only thing that's really been an issue is that your body clock doesn't know what's going on." Xephos chuckled. "Wish it were that easy for me. You don't even seem homesick." He mused.

"Why would I be homesick?" Strife said simply, tilting his head slightly.

"Well you couldn't be much further from home, Will. Your family, your friends, your work. Doesn't that bother you? It hit me pretty hard I'll tell you that for nothin'.." Xephos said, confusion slipping into his tone. He'd been distraught when he realised he was unlikely to ever get back to Lumi, to see his friends and family again..

"You were family, once. And I guess, in a sense, you still are. Other than relatives, you're pretty much the only friend I've ever had, Xeph, not gonna lie. And you're here. _Alive_. Different, yes. But still very much alive." Strife said slowly, looking out across the darkness, rather than at his friend. "And honestly. There's not much left for me on Lumi. I don't speak to my family all that much anymore, not because we don't get along, but simply 'cos we're all busy with our own lives. I don't really have any friends. Just acquaintances. I've done what I set out to do with a fair amount of success. I've travelled. And now I'm here. And besides, the planets going to shit anyway and I don't really want to go back for the time being." Strife shrugged. Looking across at Xephos again.

"Huh. Fair enough." Said Xephos. "What's keeping your siblings so busy then? And your parents too I guess." He asked, curious as to what had gone on whilst he'd been on Minecraftia. Xephos had gotten along fairly well with Strife's family. Of if nothing else they had all seemed to like him.

"I don't fucking know." Strife chuckled. "They're all over the place."

"You're supposed to keep track of these things, William." Xephos smiled.

"Eh, I'm the youngest I can get away with anything." Strife smiled, shrugging again.

"That's.. Very true.. Actually.." Xephos said, partially to himself as he remembered all the times he'd gotten in trouble and his younger sibling hadn't when they'd both done something wrong growing up.

They both stayed silent for a minute or two before Xephos chuckled to himself again.

"Now what are you laughing at?" Strife smiled.

"Just thinking."

"About?"

"Stuff. And things. I dunno. All this talk about siblings and I just remember the first time I met yours." Xephos smiled.

"Oh good lord." Strife chuckled. "That was certainly interesting. You had my parents being all polite and trying to make a good impression-"

"-and then I had your siblings on either side of me. And in one ear I had 'you seem like a nice person and I hope you two are happy together.' And in the other ear I had 'you hurt him and I'll rip your throat out.' It was.. Yeah, interesting works." Xephos laughed, thinking back to something that happened a lifetime ago.

"But then meeting your family wasn't much different. Albeit. On a completely different scale." Strife pointed out, smiling still.

"Oh I'm not saying that it wasn't an equally as bizarre event. Although, it wasn't so much my parents being weird about you looking after me. More them being finicky about how you came from a more middle-class background. Which still pisses me off, honestly. But hey, what would Lumi be without stupid societal relations.." Xephos said, drifting between amused and mildly annoyed. "Fall in love with someone of a different upbringing to yourself and you might as well give up before you even start."

"Hey, I fell in love with someone of higher status than myself. And I did all right." Strife smiled, voice smooth like silk and eyes glimmering in a way that made Xephos' heart flutter. "Well, until he decided to crash into a distant fucking planet anyway." He added, rather bluntly though still smiling.

"I hardly had a choice in the matter." Xephos smiled. "But you do have a point." Silence fell over then again for a while. "You know. I miss it." Xephos said, breaking the quiet.

"What, crashing into distant planets?" Strife said flatly, though a smile was tugging at his lips.

"What? No!" Xephos exclaimed, trying to fight back the stupid smile on his face. "Once is enough thank you. No. I miss all the stupid bullshit we'd get up to at uni. Just messing around and having fun, you know."

"Now, when you say 'stupid bullshit'-" Strife said, a cheeky grin on his face.

"Not that kind of-- Strife!!" Xephos laughed, whipping his tail round and flicking Strife in the back of the head with it. Which set the blonde off into fits of laughter too.

* * *

The next twenty minutes passed quickly, chatting and laughing about all sorts of weird and wonderful little oddities that came to mind from their time together on Lumi. Mostly unusual happenings and antics of students and teachers alike at the university.

Such as the time that Xephos had tripped on the stairs and cut his hand. Just for him and Strife to subsequently stop a passing professor from falling down those same stairs after almost passing out upon seeing the blood.

Or the time the weather shields malfunctioned and the entire campus was plunged into constant rain for a good nine days before it was fixed. The flooding was horrendous. The place simply wasn't built for that much rainfall. Or any rainfall, really. Xephos and Strife had been stuck in their dorm for at least three days thanks to the flooding. Not that they had minded the extra time together. Classes were cancelled for quite a while afterwards, cleaning up took weeks.

They went as far back as their first date, both laughing at how shy and weird they'd been, despite knowing one another fairly well at that point. They'd both flushed pink at the awkwardness of it, and at the unspoken memory of how, at the end of the evening, they'd given into temptation and kissed. Short and sweet. But starting a relationship that could have lasted a lifetime, and would have, if it had been allowed to.

"Humans are good at doing that." Xephos said simply. Having long since switched to their native language, translators cast aside to allow for something a little more like old times. The conversation had shifted from old memories to how Humans and Lumians differed. By that point, they were both laying back in the grass, side by side. Xephos had his legs crossed at the ankle, his arms folded beneath his head, his tail trailing out from underneath him, looping by his feet. Strife had one hand on his chest, in the other in the grass beside him, one leg bent slightly, head turned a little to the side so that he could see Xephos properly.

"What, putting labels on everything?" Strife smiled. "Why do they do that?"

"If I knew I'd tell you. But I still have no idea and I've been here for ten years. They just generally make a big thing out of small things, like to outdo each other in things that definitely aren't a competition." Xephos shrugged. There were a lot of things about humans that he still didn't understand. Mostly social things, language things, things that didn't really matter but still left him confused, because it just didn't happen or exist on Lumi.

"Such as?"

"Oh where to begin." Xephos chuckled. "I've seen my friends get competitive about the most bizarre things."

"Like?"

"Like, a few years ago I was just chatting with a group of friends and we somehow ended up on the subject of broken bones. Which of course sparked competition between them."

"How?"

"I don't know. But everyone was sharing stories. Each one a little more painful than the previous. Like, Lalna said that when he was nine he'd fallen down some stairs and broke his arm in two places. And then Martyn piped up about how when he was thirteen, he'd fallen out of a tree onto hard stone and broken his shoulder-blade and three ribs. It was like going through the most pain put you on top. Which I didn't get then and still don't get now." Xephos said, his voice laced with confusion, though he was still smiling.

"They're competitive. Though perhaps in the wrong ways."

"That's true. Or maybe my friends are just odd. I dunno. One or the other. Probably both."

"Judging by what I've seen. I'm going to say it's a bit of both there, Xeph."

Xephos chuckled. "What the fuck are we talking about?"

"I have no idea. How did we start talking about this stuff? What the fuck happened?" Strife smiled.

"I have absolutely no idea." Xephos smiled, rolling onto his side so that he was facing Strife properly. "Guess some things don't change, huh." It'd be so easy to shuffle to the side a little way and rest his head on the blondes shoulder.. So easy.. So tempting..

"Xeph?" He heard Strife say, though he suddenly sounded distant. "Xeph?" Strife repeated, clicking his fingers and snapping Xephos out of his daze. "Wakey wakey. If you're tired you can just go inside you know. I don't mind." He smiled, emerald eyes still shining.

Xephos sat up. "No I'm.. I'm fine.. Sorry.. Just zoned out a little there.." He said simply, looking down at his feet rather than at Strife.

Strife's smile faded as his eyes narrowed. "Xephy, are you ok?" He said softly, starting to sound concerned as he sat up too.

"I.. I dunno.. I just.. Can't.. It's just.. So h-hard... I'm sorry.. I should probably.." Xephos said slowly, he went to stand up but Strife caught his shoulder, stopping him.

"Xephy. What's wrong?" Strife said, worried.

Xephos shook his head. "It's nothing. I'm just being stupid. I just need to.. Get over it.. I-" He paused as he looked back at Strife. "..Xephy.. You haven't called me that in a long time.. Or.. At all.. Since you got here.." He continued, confused as to why Strife was using an old pet-name.

Strife blinked before letting out a quiet laugh as he looked down at the grass. "Huh. Didn't even notice." He smiled, looking back up at Xephos. "Guess old habits die hard, huh."

"Yeah.." Xephos muttered before looking up at the sky again. "I think it's supposed to rain soon. Well, Nilesy certainly seems to think it will, though he's usually right. So it probably will." He said quickly, changing the subject. Though he wasn't sure why. "Summer's coming to a close, won't have many more clear nights like this.."

There was silence for a few seconds before Xephos felt Strife squeeze his shoulder. "Better make the most of it then, eh." The blonde smiled. Gently pulling at Xephos' shoulder as he laid back down in the grass, taking the brunette with him. Xephos didn't resist, if anything, he welcomed it.

Strife let Xephos rest his head on his shoulder, his arm around the dark-haired man. Xephos stayed quiet, Strife was fairly sure he was starting to fall asleep. After a few minutes he found himself absently fiddling with his friends hair. It was quite a bit longer than it used to be, though still neatly styled, well, usually anyway. Though it wasn't the same perfect auburn brown as it had been, now scattered with grey in places.

"You're going grey." Strife muttered, mostly to himself, not sure if Xephos would hear.

"Oh fuck off." Xephos grinned, looking up Strife. "Ha, I bet the first thing you thought when you saw me again was _'fuck he got old.'_ " He added, laughing lightly as he spoke.

"No." Strife said gently, letting his hand rest on Xephos' arm rather than playing with his hair. "Other than the whole _'you're still alive'_ thing.. It was more _'where did all the scars come from.'_ " He continued, voice still soft.

Xephos' eyes widened slightly as he processed what was said. A dull laugh escaped his throat before he spoke. "All over the fucking place." He said bluntly, his smile fading. "I've done and seen so much. Fought in so many battles that hundreds of others didn't return from. I've travelled so far and been on adventures that have yielded great rewards. But I've also, quite literally, been through hell and back. I've been captured, locked up, imprisoned , held hostage, I've been threatened, abused, tortured. I've come within inches of my life and there's been moments where I didn't think I'd make it out alive. I've lost so many great people. I've been betrayed and lied to by people I thought were my friends. I've gone through times where I didn't see any point in carrying on.. Heck, even now I'm doing stupid things for stupid reasons.." Xephos said slowly, his voice shaking slightly. "Is it any wonder I don't sleep at night.." He muttered, closing his eyes.

"Xephy.." Strife said softly, not sure what to say.

" _But_ ," Xephos started again, voice louder, firmer, less solemn. "my friends have always been there. And there are so many of them now. But especially Dew. He's been there since day one. Right by my side. Stopping me from screwing up completely. Stopping me from starving to death." He chuckled lightly. "It's been hard. But you know. I don't regret any of it. Well. Most of it. Some of it was my own fault."

Strife smiled. "You've had an exciting time without me, haven't you."

"Yeah and I've got the scars to prove it. But in the end it brought us back together so what does it matter, eh." Xephos smiled. Looking up at Strife's bright emerald eyes, fully aware that his own freckles were tinting pink.

They both fell silent again. Looking back up at the dark sky. Merely enjoying each other's company.

After a while, Strife felt Xephos' breathing level out. Strife looked down at him, saw him laying perfectly still, aside from the gentle rise and fall of his chest, curled up ever so slightly, his tail draped across the two of them, something he hadn't noticed him do. Xephos was sound asleep, snoring lightly. The lights across his face and ears and down his arms had faded somewhat, but were still glowing like tiny diamond stars across his skin.

Strife stayed where he was for a little while. But as the night grew on, the wind started to pick up, and it began to get cooler. He didn't want Xephos to get cold. So, very carefully, he scooped the sleeping Lumian up in his arms, and carried him back to the house. And, once there, he took him up to his bedroom, and settled him down in his bed, watching him silently by the door for a moment before closing it softly as he left, still smiling.

* * *

"Xeph's asleep, isn't he."

"Honeydew, you're still awake? Um, yeah, Xeph- Xeph dozed off and I didn't want to wake him."

"Having you around is really doin' him some good, you know that, right."

"Um.. Yes?"

"He's been really relaxed over the past couple weeks. He's usually rather.. Particular I guess about fallin' asleep around people. But he doesn't give a damn when it's you he's with, or so it'd seem. What's your secret eh? I could do with a chilled out, less stressed Xephos when you're not here."

"Heh.. I dunno.. I guess he just still feels comfortable around me after all the time we spent together on Lumi.. Despite all the time apart."

"Yeah, 'spose you two were together a pretty long time. Oh well. Nice to see him happy, you know."

"Yeah."

"You're a good guy, William. Perhaps not the kinda guy I'd usually mingle with, but a good guy none the less."

"Um, thank you."

"Don't mention it, mate. I'm gonna get some sleep, I'm shattered, you all right on your own?"

"Yeah I'm fine, jet-lagged to all hell but I'm fine."

"Haha, see you tomorrow, mate."

"Mm, goodnight, Honeydew."

**Author's Note:**

> Fun (or maybe not so fun depending on how you view it) fact, Xephos and Will were together on Lumi for roughly seven or eight years. Maybe a bit more. Now on Lumi that isn't a drastically long amount of time. Lumi's years are rather long but the Lumian's themselves are very long lived. But on Minecraftia, that translates to just over twenty years. Which from a humans perspective is a much longer amout of time. So yeah. They were together for quite a while before Xephos crashed on Minecraftia. Quite a while indeed..  
> But yeah, this was a random drabble that got a tad too long, but oh well, I hope you enjoyed it :)


End file.
